I would like to be able finetune the combat warnings - it's causing headache that every kind of irrelevant attack (eg. when a space monster just cast it's eyes on an exploration ship) will cause a message appear (even just one line) and the warning claxon....

Hmm...imagine a "energy heat map" layer in the mini-map that would show a heat map that visually conveys the amount of energy available. In fact I could imagine quite a few useful layers to be added there. The Paradox games like Hearts of Iron and Europe Universalis have 10+ layers for their mini-maps and it is quite useful.

Is there an updated master wish list somewhere? The one I see is from 2010 and it seems like half the stuff on there has already been added in the expansions and patches, etc. Would love to see an updated master wish list that excludes stuff already implemented. I am full of ideas but I don't want to post stuff that has already been mentioned ten times :)

-- actual tiled maps for colony surfaces would be AWESOME. Wouldn't have to be huge surface maps, maybe like a 5 by 10 grid on average or even smaller, varying based on the size of the colony. Limiting this to just having surface maps for colonies is key because it'd obviously get out of hand if ALL planets/moons had surface maps and surface activity

-- Ability to move ground units around for actual ground wars on colonies. This would entail more variety of ground units, ground facilities, with facilities being in specific tiles, etc

-- Resources and cargo on colonies would also be located in, or originate from, specific tiles which could then be fortified, fought over, improved, etc.

-- You could also have 2 or more empires controlling the same colony, either in a friendly fashion or in a tense cold war situation with a heavily fortified border, etc. And then surface wars on colonies during times of war. Control of the colony's population and resources would be based upon control of the tiles.

-- intel agents(or new commando agents?) can move around on colonies and cause enemy units to defect, take out planetary shields, assassinate other characters, sabotage specific facilities, etc.

-- This would also imply more bombardment options

-- more options and variety of planetary shields. Maybe cheaper or more primitive planetary shields only protect a few tiles instead of the entire planet. Or shields could exchange coverage for strength or vice versa. Complete planetary shields would be an expensive late-game tech and even then they might still be weaker than more focused planetary shields that cover a few tiles. You could stack planetary shields as well, maybe up to some threshold to prevent them from being too strong.

-- new tech branch, or branches, within the main 3 tech areas to encompass surface-related techs

-- mechanics for handling control of orbital space as being a separate thing from control of the surface. Though controlling orbital space should probably be a requirement for allowing an invasion

-- visually I could envision the colony surface maps coming into view as you zoom way into a colony. Or, just clicking on a button to bring up the map view via a pop-up could work as well

-- An option to display colonies in a box in the upper left or upper right corner, with an ability to cycle through them within this box. This way you could actually manage surface activity on colonies while still doing all the normal stuff. Perhaps with some filter options like only show contested colonies or have checkboxes that let you set specific colonies to appear in this windowed surface map view.

-- ability to set surface activity to automated via the Empire policies, or set this on a case by case basis.(turn on and off automation for each colony just like with ships) And make this fine grained via check boxes so you could turn on and off automation for specific aspects of surface activity. In a large Empire I'm imagining that 75% or more of the colonies would have surface activity automated but for that smaller percentage of contested or strategic colonies you might have the automation turned off. Or for smaller galaxies you might be right in controlling all your precious colonies.

I'd pay the price of a full damn expansion in a heartbeat for this functionality and die a very happy man ;) Always been my dream to have 4X space empire game that includes planetary surface detail.

Pirates, Corruption, and Criminal Syndicates:1. Criminal Syndicates as a component or companion to piracy. High-corruption or high discontentment on a colony should influence the creation of a criminal syndicate that either acts as an invisible corruption engine to slowly increase corruption, or that begins to funnel larger and larger sums of an empire's income to local pirates. Pirates, of course, use these credits to build more, and more powerful, ships. Criminal syndicates infiltrate nearby mining bases, and can spread to other bases using independent and infiltrated private sector freighters. These bases/ships must be destroyed to eliminate the syndicate, and are slowly revealed by an empire's spies set to counter-intelligence. Syndicate mining bases still produce for the parent empire, though at a reduced rate. This would encourage wealthy empires capable of ignoring revenue losses from corruption to pay attention to the corruption of far-flung colonies.

Syndicates have a diplomatic component, and Syndicates can be contacted/allied with at risk of exposing your own empire to them. Contact with Syndicates can grant the usual discovery purchases, "black market" strategic and luxury resource purchases, and the ability to purchase diplomatic contact with foreign empires the Syndicate has infiltrated as well as pirate factions. Alliances with Syndicates grant both trade revenue and a reduction in the mining penalty at any of your mines that they have infiltrated, but greatly increases the likelihood that your empire's private sector will be taken over by the syndicate. Ships and mines infiltrated by allied syndicates are designated by a tiny colored icon next to the ship/base name. Syndicates do not forward contacts for other Syndicates as this would be helping the "competition," and rival Syndicate freighters will fire on one another if the freighters have weapons.

2. It has been suggested before, I think, but piracy should have a connection to empire corruption. By that I mean local corruption should influence the likelihood of a pirate base spawning in the vicinity. While overall corruption on a given colony might be fairly low, if the population is sufficiently large there would presumably be plenty of individuals willing and interested in engaging in piracy. This would encourage wealthy empires capable of ignoring revenue losses from corruption to pay attention to the corruption of far-flung colonies.

3. Pirates spawned near a given empire should either be made up of that empire's race, or of only the closest neighboring empires(including independent worlds). If the only Teekan worlds are on the other side of the galaxy, a Teekan pirate faction should not spawn near you. The race of the pirates should have a diplomatic impact on other empires. If the Securans are being raided by human pirates, the Securans should note this and suffer a mild diplomatic penalty towards human empires. A positive gain can be obtained by human empires by taking out those pirates. In this way, pirate alliances can better be used to frame other empires or influence diplomatic relationships.

4. When engaged in a pirate alliance, one should be able to direct their attacks. Rather than pirates engaging whatever targets they decide you hate, you should be able to point them at a specific empire in their area. They would, of course, still engage independent targets as normal, and would still defend themselves form other empires, but they would focus their efforts on the empire you designate. Exercising this option would incur a premium charge determined by the strength of the target empire, preferably as an increase of the monthly fee for the alliance. Perhaps multiple empires could be specified, with commensurate fee increases for each one.

I think alot of the features mentioned above are personal prefrences and i suspect some of them may be incorportated into the 3rd expansion of Distant Worlds although, i myself hope mostly for multiplayer as the AI can be a little lacking at times.

I think alot of the features mentioned above are personal prefrences and i suspect some of them may be incorportated into the 3rd expansion of Distant Worlds although, i myself hope mostly for multiplayer as the AI can be a little lacking at times.

1.) Battle formations for fleets ... you have an own screen, where you could place your ships ... how many ships you could use depends on the generals skills (maybe own skill) 2.) LANDBATTLES, also with formations and different unit types

Your probably right there, It's wishful thinking i suppose, if they where going to add Multiplayer, they probably would have done it already. Maybe some way for the AI to redesign their ships to more accurately deal with your own forces? I mean, come on, late game you've got massive 1000+ capital ships that can wipe out AI empires on their own...

I agree with land battles FlashXAron, but i think they might skimp a little too close to the old Imperium Galactica Series if they did that, could be copyright related. Formations - Love it.

I'd be cool if there was a new game type added to the game, for example 4X (Like from the Evochron series). Versus other games with this as their main game type, I can see this game really pulling it off.Especially since you can absolutely depend on the game continuously evolving one way or another in itself.

The second thing that would also be cool, is an optional leveling system for the ships. Optional, because simply replacing the game system as is would be blasphemy, and because an optional leveling system would just add more life and replay-ability to the game, to its already endless replay-ability.

There are a few things that are irritating me. The first is so close to being a bug that I thought about posting in tech support...

1. Event popups. When you have two (or more) events happening in quick succession for things you want popups for, the last popup is the only one you see. I'd like to see popups be persistent - display the latest, but be able to dismiss the popup to see the previous popup (which in turn needs to be dismissed to see the previous one etc. you get the gist) with another button for dismiss all.

2. Somewhat related to 1. - the event history should allow the details to be selectable, so that it will take you to the site/object of the event.

3. The ability to see the cargo of an object (ship or base) from a link on the bottom left info panel for the currently selected object. The only way to do that at the moment is by finding the object in the ships and bases list and checking the cargo.

2. Click the 'go to event location' button. 3. A slight short cut - double clicking the name of the ship/base on the bottom left panel will open the ship/base in the ships and bases list. Still somewhat cumbersome.

I find it even more painful because usually to see the final digit of the date (so you can figure out which messages you just missed) you need to drag the column divider over to the left and this is never remembered, so you need to do it every time you go to the window.

A way to completely forbid a system to the AI. Mostly so it stops sending colony ships to a system infested with silver mist and also stops sending tiny strike forces to a huge infestation zone to further generate more mist..

I would like the option of semi-automating troop recruitment just like we can with ship designs.

I want to be able to set a minimum number of troops and a maximum number either on a per planet basis(from the planets summary screen)and/or a global setting from the empire policy window where I can set default troop garrison levels on a population basis.

With that, we can have troop transports obey those minimum and maximum rules so that transports will not pick up troops that would reduce a planet below its minimum garrison. It will only pick up the excess troops and the maximum limit will stop the AI from over recruiting and draining your budget.

Another idea, being able to flag certain battalions in the troop summary screen as like "invasion force only" so that troop transports will prioritize picking these troops up first because they are more experienced, of a certain racial type, etc. Maybe there's the possibility of assigning troops to specific transport fleets?

So the troop transports, when given the general order to just load available troops from nearby colonies will first take the ones flagged for invasion force, then take the excess units trained up on planets.

Furthermore, another great thing to add to this is that automated troop transports will move troops from worlds who have more than their minimum number of troops, to worlds that have below the minimum.

Agree with all of icedude's points. Also, make it automatic for the invading troop general to return to the troop transport he invaded from. We should be able to base a troop general at a troop transport in the same way as fleet admirals can base at fleets. Then make it automatic for them to transfer back to the TT after the invasion.

I had an interesting idea to improve further the diplomatic and military aspects of the game. In the galaxy there are many treasures but there are also dangerous things, such as the World Annihilator or the Beacon of Shaktur. For some people it may be useful to have the ability to create forbidden zones in the places where we find valuable or dangerous things, out of the player's influence zone, to prevent other factions to get there. A forbidden zone would be maintained by military ships and work similarly to a blockade, whereas it would apply to an entire solar system, a gas cloud, etc. not only to a single planet.

Of course this would come at the price of a slight reputation loss, as many factions would not be pleased to see that.

I wish for a text notes window (i.e. notepad) accessible from the main map with one click.

Currently I run notepad from outside the game and alt-tab to it frequently to add the systems which are named but not fully explored. I also note things here like monsters, asteroids in unexpected places, specials, unexplored ruins, etc. It can be cumbersome to always be alt-tabbing. I know that various other players like to make external notes on different things.

I'm not a programmer but envisage that this should be something which is very easy to implement.

A second monitor is nice for note keeping. You can also browse the forum while the time advances during quiet periods

Map/object markers would be more useful. The player can use them for debris fields, kaltor swarms. The place you fled from that silvermist...

It would be nice if the galaxy map had different categories for "visited systems" - you have a rough idea of its layouts, you have been there, and "explored system", you have resource info for every object in the system, and have explored every ruin.

If this is available one would really want to see both sides, though. Flag. Explored systems. Unexplored system. Visited system. Unvisited (eh) systems... There are really 3 relevant states "not visited", "partly explored", "fully explored".

It would be nice to have a second monitor... actually it would be nice to have a computer which was not borderline in performance so that being on the internet whilst the game was loaded was a realistic option. I guess someone will have to buy one, sometime.

I have previously suggested colour coding systems for fully explored, other options could be other colours... but this I think is a more complex endeavour than enabling a text window within the game. Also while perhaps being less flashy and convenient the text window is in the end more flexible.

I don't think a text window is that simple, and giving options for showing the 3 states of exploration in the galaxy map could be from rather simple to a major pain, depending on what kind of data is stored and how it is organized.

An object marker system should be somewhat feasible, even if storing a minor text string. It could have visibility like fleets, and not interfere with the game.

This touches on my perennial gripe about automation: escorting and patrolling. All it does is burn fuel for no reason and make Energy Collectors on ships near-useless. The Patrol order should be replaced with a Defend order, where instead of flying in circles around a planet the ship just sits next to it in the gravity well.

If the object being defended comes under attack, the ship powers up and sorties out to destroy the invader, then returns to the planet/station and powers down again. This would incur massive fuel savings across the empire with no real loss in effectiveness.